My brother and I handed out freshly picked oranges. Rifle-carting troops frequently marched by our ranch to a mountainside firing range. The War Department seized the swanky Ojai Valley Country Club to train battalions of Army infantry. That’s what good property cost when only 7.5 million people lived in California. We soon moved to Ojai and my parents bought a small orange ranch for $9,000. She angrily invited him in to feed the baby. Mom was scolded by a warden for using a flashlight while feeding my newborn sister. There were blackouts enforced by neighborhood “wardens” every time an enemy air raid was suspected, which was often. The enemy could be on our beaches any day. That scared practically everybody along the coast. “What was I supposed to do with a pitchfork?” “They gave us pitchforks and told us to go stand on the beach and defend it,” I remember him griping to worried Mom when he finally arrived home after sunup.
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